Be brave Wednesday Painter

[WEDNESDAY 20 JUNE 2012]
A short day, werking on the blue morse code canvas. It has taken me this long to realise the neon dots and dashes would benefit from being placed deeper in the dark recess.  Essentially this will involve re-rendering the blue neon glow from the centre out.  This is usually a long job, but I need to get it done today, as I'm planning to have this painting finished by the end of next week's session.

Time to take some risks and not be so precious over months of werk. Be brave Wednesday Painter, be brave...

I have found myself increasingly resorting to small sable brushes for the fine detail brushwerk around the pin-points of light. I hold my breath and try to steady my hand as I close in to make my mark. I find it too intense to werk for more than a few minutes at a time. I think I might scream.

I certainly prefer the broader, freer brush strokes I can make as the glow spreads out from the nucleus.

I leave it for lunch and some internet procrastination.

By around 3pm I am running short of time. I clean my brushes and hang the painting inside where it will get some light and hopefully be dry enough to werk on next week, when I plan to tackle the glow around the edges of the rock-face and hopefully get the bloody thing finished.

Scrawlings and Rugs

[WEDNESDAY 04 APRIL 2012]
It all started so well: sketching out a new neon design on a new canvas and then a break to do some email/internet errands. I moved some canvases back out to the studio and finished off a lo-fi scrawling I made yesterday with a touch of watercolour.

[not sure where it came from, but at some point I was possibly thinking of Numan, hence "Gary". Adding the shock of bleached-blonde hair seemed like the obvious final step. There will be more lo-fi subconscious/conscious drawings in the near future]

And now?  Now I am hungry for my lunch and I must eat before I get on with the afternoon shift.  But I've been stuck at this computer screen for the past hour or so, doing this and that and the other.  ENOUGH!

I ate some soup.

It was not Campbell's Condensed though.

Afternoon: My first proper bit of painting consisted of touching up the "rock-face" where the blue glow is leaking out of the dark chasm.  I didn't do much, and I will continue next time.

Instead of returning to all those old, half-finished canvases, I stuck the fresh new one on the easel and commenced painting in around the words which will be depicted as deep-red neon. As you can see I am possibly thinking about jacking all this painting in and opening a carpet shop.

trials and tribulations

[WEDNESDAY 28 MARCH 2012]
Another glorious spring day, and I've put off my trip to the studio long enough. I've not been slacking off though. No, not me, I have a new canvas stretched and triple-primed.

Somehow I have managed to make it through to lunch with very little of your actual painting being done.  Oh dear me.

For the afternoon session I re-visit 'Home Sweet Home'. And I stay there for the remainder of the day, knocking back the green glow, drawing in the darkness, violently blending, smoothing out, touching up...

And now? Now I am thoroughly sick of the sight of that canvas and I hang it on the wall and I hope that come next week, and with a little distance, it will look better.  Oh the trials and tribulations of a struggling artist!

Apologies for the slight rant. I am now drinking warm, calming tea to help me back to werk.

Not much else to report today, I leave the studio feeling a bit ragged and spent, but with very little sense of satisfaction.

the residue of success

[WEDNESDAY 21 MARCH 2012]
A beautiful, early spring day.  And what better way to spend it than holed up in a window-less loft space!

I began the day with a short stint of paid work, and then the time was all mine.

First, some email and internet errands and posts.
Second, I mounted a couple of slides for a new secret date painting.
Third, I marked out the date in a swish Art Deco font.
Fourth, I went back on the computer.
Fifth, I ate lunch.
And finally I was ready to paint.

The continuing saga of 'Home Sweet Home'.
I am pleased to report that having sat and gazed upon it at leisure during the past 2 evenings, it isn't nearly as bad as I believed last week.  Still needs a bit more werk in a couple of the green neon areas though, so I tackle these and leave it at that. I will let it rest until next week, or maybe the week after.

And so, onto my next job: that blue 'morse code', breaching the edge of the faux rock-face with illuminating blue glow.  I think we're getting there.

Flushed with the residue of success, I go and have a cup of tea, and put the slab of rock-face aside to dry. And when I return it is to tackle another, almost finished, canvas.  I'm still learning when it comes to this white neon, but someday soon I will finish this white 'Path of Least Resistance'.

And that is me pretty much done for the day.  See you next week.

orange and green

[WEDNESDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2012]
That was not the keen-as-mustard start I was hoping for today, but in the 2 hours I have been painting I've finally taken the plunge with the orange/green neon crossover.

Prior to that I found myself procrastinating on the internet - a common symptom when I am stuck with a painting and not sure how to tackle the next phase.  During my searching I did pay another visit to the always pleasing Project Neon blog - one girl and a camera documenting the neon signs of New York city.  I can't help but have pangs of jealousy at the richness and variety of neon in that great city, and it makes me yearn for more neon in Brighton and reminds me that I really should pay Mr Fishtail Neon another visit at his studio whilst the days are still short.

Back in the loft, I tickle and tease the green-meets-orange glow, until I have to put it aside.  But what to do now?  The blue 'morse-code' painting is wet, and I really need to get some paintings finished rather than commencing werk on canvases that will take months to complete.  There is a small 'Path of Least Resistance' in white neon.  It has sat on the shelf for months and months, but finally the day has come to be taken to task.

I sat and I looked...

[WEDNESDAY 18 JANUARY 2012]
Such good intentions can only be broken:  I was in the studio early enough, the 'Home Sweet Home' canvas was fixed on the easel, a cup of tea was made, and I sat on the stool and I looked.

Minutes passed, and I sat and I looked. I put some music on, and I sat and I looked. I switched on the computer, and I sat and I looked. I flicked through a book about neon, and I sat and I looked. I went back through my notebook of the past few years, and I sat and I looked. I found reference photos on the old computer, and I sat and I looked again.  Then I came back to the house and made another cup of tea, and bashed away on an acoustic guitar for a bit.  By now it was 11 o'clock. An idea: PING! Back to the studio I trot.

And the werk begins...

Is it right? Is it wrong? Is there a wrong when it can be painted over at any time? Plagued with doubt I retire for lunch.

My idea was to split the orange and green glow where the heart and border meet, bringing in some darkness, rather than making a murky mess by mixing the 2 colour palettes.  I will leave it for now and werk on it a later date.

As the afternoon progresses I am werking simultaneously on the Orange neon and the green neon, I stop to pick up a brush.  Now which one should I use...

By now most of the canvas area has had a fresh coat of paint applied - There is something incredibly sensual about silky smooth brush strokes in wet, glistening paint. Even green paint.

ten minus fifteen

[WEDNESDAY 02 NOVEMBER 2011]
I award myself 10 points for being in the studio just after 9am and sanding down the primed canvas.

I then deduct 15 points for straying and checking my email and spending an hour on the computer.  Procrastination is a time-sapping thing.

I must get on, I need to leave early today, and my precious few hours are dwindling as a sit here and type.

I made great progress with 'Home Sweet Home', painting intuitively (why can't it always be that way): first green neon and then the deeper, darker reds of the orange neon.

Day of discipline

[WEDNESDAY 19 OCTOBER 2011]
Today I am determined to get painting first, then do all the other crap during breaks later in the day.  I'm going outside, I will, hopefully, be some time.

I return, with a few hours' orange neon painting under my belt, and a hunger in my tummy.

---SNIPPET OF INTERNAL MONOLOGUE---

- Discipline yourself Wednesday Painter, you can't sit here all afternoon supping tea watching the internet.
- Just let me finish my cup of tea and I'll be off.

---MONOLOGUE ENDS---

Another pass of the 'Home Sweet Home' canvas, making those neon letters bright white.  So bright I gotta wear shades.

at 18.39 I clean up the brushes and switch off the lights.

The last hours were spent on green neon - fluid, easy painting - a pleasure.

Discipline is good.

Tricolores and dirty hands (eventually)

[WEDNESDAY 12 OCTOBER 2011]
I curse the things I always leave until Wednesday morning to get done:  today these included printing off directions to collect the 'Wish You Were Here' canvas from Manchester, with a convoluted road trip via here there and everywhere thrown in; emailing and phoning various people to meet/visit during the trip; constructing a CD cover for a belated birthday present; checking a L'Amour Electronique mix before it goes live; plus various other odd jobs.  Consequently I greeted the studio just after midday.

And even then I didn't crack on with the neon painting.  Instead I began some new Tricolore posters for the aforementioned L'Amour Electronique.

It is lunch time now.  I need sustenance. Then the painting.

Or not.  The time is 17:22, I have done precious little painting, except for adding some acid-y pale blue glow to the morse-code.  I feel frustrated and listless.  I have about an hour and 40 minutes left to do something worthwhile.  Here I go...

18.10: I. GIVE. UP.  But not before I've got my hands dirty blackening 12 sheets of A4 with indian ink, and painting another Tricolore.  The black paper is for a mock-up of a proposal I'm waiting to hear back about.  The Tricolore to add to the collection above.

rich, deep, velvety reds

[WEDNESDAY 28 SEPTEMBER 2011]
Back to the Wednesday Painting then...  I had yet more paid work to do first thing, then I cleaned my filthy bicycle, and then the usual email admin.

The creative werk did not begin until midday, and the painting not until 2pm.  I've been putting together a submission for an exhibition: deadline 30 September. The details are secret, but it will involve 12 small canvases, laid out in sequence (as in this sketch).

I returned to 'Home Sweet Home', I find I can werk on the slightly wet layer of last week, though if left for a day or 2 longer, the canvas would have to be rested.  Today I gave it some rich, deep, velvety reds and I brought in the surrounding blackness.

The cup of filth

[WEDNESDAY 06 JULY 2011]
More paid work this morning.  It is midday, the clouds have opened and I'm just about ready to paint.  Today will be all about the blue neon.  I have some morse code craving my attentions, and I need practice so I can work on that competition canvas at home tomorrow.

Now the morse code is wet with rich Phthalo Blue paint, and I can't touch it for another 2 weeks.  It is a good job I'm werking the competition canvas in acrylics - dry by the time I've cleaned my brush...

I'm not going to win any prizes for being the conscientious painter today, I faffed and I time wasted and I did a bit here and a bit there, and all the while in the back of my mind I knew that the real painting was going to take place tomorrow, at home, with the Thursday Painter at the helm.

Still, I have some progress to show for my hours here:

I made some more mess on the chintzy, twee canvas

I picked out the shadows and detail of the windows and balconies of the building, darkness spilling out of the cup of filth.

the wait

[WEDNESDAY 22 JUNE 2011]
Today I await delivery of a canvas.  The canvas has been supplied for me to re-produce a logo idea I submitted for a competition.  The rules have been changed and the goal-posts have been moved since I entered my idea.  But now that I've been short-listed as one of the finalists, I feel I should give it a shot.  It will be good practice, and it gives me a deadline to work to.  Plus: it would be nice to win the prize money!

No sign of it yet, so I shall return to my other canvases and show them some of my attentions: I gave the morse code neon a once over with some luscious Phthalo Blue...

Rather than twiddling my thumbs waiting, I decided to chase up that canvas:   turns out it's being made to measure, and it won't be sent out before Friday.  BALLS!  That's one week less werk for me then.

More filth: this time directed at the new canvas with the chintzy wallpaper over it.

the lazy routine (and how to get out of it)

[WEDNESDAY 15 JUNE 2011]
I seem to be falling into a rather lazy routine of late: waking around 9am, having a shower and a leisurely breakfast, checking my emails, drifting around on the internet.  I think I've lulled myself into the idea that because I stay here later than I used to, I don't need to start as early as I once did.  [internal voice: "But you could get even more painting done, you dummy!"]. The voice in my head speaks sense.

The Path of Least Resistance 3 (pink) is signed.

I threw a load of inky filth down the morse code rock face, it made a right bloody mess.

The idea was to make the rock face more scuzzy and stained, I was happy standing over the canvas at 16.36.

a brave idea (that did not work)

[THURSDAY 19 MAY 2011]
The return of the Thursday Painter.  Sitting here faffing on the internet.  He's thinking about what painting to tackle first, but mostly he's struggling to get out there and filling time with internet crap...

Journal Entry:
This morning I worked on some watercolour sketches.  I don't do these very often and I'm not happy so far with the results.  One of them is a draft for a competition, think I might need to have a few goes before I'm happy enough to submit it.

I didn't get much else done before lunch, but had a spurt of activity at 2.30pm, taking the old "rock face" in hand, I concluded it was time I got it finished.  I added a bit of glow leaking out over the edges of the fault-line. And now the canvas resides temporarily in the house ready to have holes picked at my leisure.

At this point I had a brave idea, I've been mulling it over for a few days. But the time had come to seize the moment (I still had a practice run on a crappy old small canvas to check).  My plan: to paint over the big square Unitation d'Habité painting with some yellow-y white, then scrape it all off with a plank of wood.

It didn't work.  I cursed myself.  I took to it with a rag and a bottle of white spirit, scrubbing hard to remove as much paint as I could.  Still no joy.

I resorted to more white spirit, leaning the canvas at an angle and applying to the building.  I used up a whole bottle of white spirit and soaked the rug in the stuff..

So now I've removed as much of the fuck-up as I can and I'm still not any happier with the painting than when I came in this morning.  At least the "rock-face" looks better...

The Imposter

[THURSDAY 05 MAY 2011]
The Thursday Painter returns again. Some say he is an imposter, a doppelgänger, an evil twin: Hell bent on undoing all the good work of his flip-side. He brings out the worst: the procrastination, the doubts, the lack of confidence...

Hang on a minute, those are all negative traits displayed here nearly every Wednesday.

It is 10.51am. I have still not started painting. I'm sitting here tip-tapping away on the computer, spouting nonsense that no-one will read.

So I went outside, but instead of heading to the studio I went down to the workshop and bashed together some bits of wood, which I hope will one day resemble a pair of record boxes to store part of my seven-inch collection.

Eventually I found myself in the garret, where I took on the second part of stage 2 on the words 'Ne Travaillez'. There was not time to werk on 'Jamais'.

Bad Morning. Good Afternoon.

[THURSDAY 28 APRIL 2011]
It is Thursday, I feel out of synch. I have done next-to-nothing all morning. I am stuck again. I blame the bank holidays, messing up my weekly schedule. I blame the internet for being available. I blame myself for lack of confidence.

I WILL get on and paint... NOW.

By lunch time I had made some progress with my morse-code.

I werked on 'Ne Travaillez Jamais' again, taking on stage 2: The addition of a pale orange glow.

What I am here for.

[WEDNESDAY 13 APRIL 2011]
I was away in Berlin last week - hence, no postings.  I return to find myself spoilt for choice, every canvas has had time to dry and is ready for werk.  I began with 'Home Sweet Home': adding some lush, deep reds to fade out to the blackness.

After a leisurely lunch I'm finding it hard to motivate myself.  But I must get out there and paint.  I must. I must. I must. It is what I am here for, after all.

It was a slowwwwww afternoon.  Touched up that new break in the rock-face on the pink "path of least resistance"

Messed up the blue morse code again, so I moved onto the continuing struggle with the red neon experimentation of 'No/Yes'.  Still not managed to make it work.

Finally: I painted in the letters of 'Ne Travaillez Jamais' with white acrylic paint, just for something to do.

And now it is almost 8pm.  8pm equals home time.

Remedial werk

[WEDNESDAY 30 MARCH 2011]
11.20am and I've not even made a move to go and paint.  I am a bad bad boy.

I will make a cup of tea and migrate all my bits and pieces forthwith.

Everything in the studio is wet.  I don't mean wet water, wet.  I mean wet paint, wet.  At least all the things I had considered working on today are.

Plan B.  The pink "path of least resistance" returns from the temporary gallery in the house.   I am satisfied with the glow, but the edges of the crack don't look concrete enough, and the crack itself looks more like a shallow hole than a deep void.

Time to tackle the crack then...  It soon becomes evident that some demolition is in order.  I take a deep breath and remove part of the rocky edge.

I will just need to cover it up now with darkness and glow.  Next time...

After this minor, but successful, step.  I find myself once again short of werk.  Maybe it's time to finally take an old nemesis to task.  I load up some reference photos and dig out 'Ne Travaillez Jamais' from behind a stack of canvases.  I also prop the 'No/Yes' canvas on the easel, this will be my testing ground.

I make notes as I go, of each step of the painting process.  Still have a lot to learn.  But I conclude that the shadows I'd painted in on the main canvas are not necessary/pointless.  I paint them out.

the return of the painter's block (conquered)

[WEDNESDAY 26 JANUARY 2011]
Couldn't sleep last night, my mind was plagued by the logistics of mounting 1,966 post-it notes.  It is definitely too early to be fretting over such things - the exhibition is at the start of March.  I'll be a sleepless wreck by the end of February...

Enough faffing.  I must go and paint.  Or at least loiter in the studio away from this creative drain that is the computer.

I think I've hit painter's block again.  I know this because I came in from the studio just after 12.00 and I'm still here at 13.24.  And when I was out there before I didn't do anything except paint over 'Home Sweet Home' again, which isn't actually painting, even though it involves a brush and paint.  I knew I shouldn't have prematurely added the 'Procrastination' label to this post.

In other news, I printed off some slides of morse code.  Though I'm not at liberty to say what they spell.

ENOUGH!  I'm turning off the computer.

Well, I'm pleased to say something did get done.  First: the weekly touch-up of the secret date plaque, then: a bright idea.  I had been intending to wait until it got dark to do some projections, but with lack of anything else to do, I went ahead whilst the light was fading.

I now have 2 canvases, sketched out with new neon motifs: The new improved 'Home Sweet Home' with a standardised neon font; and the "rockface no.2", with a morse code message painted into the crack.

All I needed was to have something new to get my teeth into.  And now I'm eager to get back to werk next week.

contemplation

[WEDNESDAY 05 JANUARY 2011]
First day back at the easel after a lonnnnnng break.  It would be nice to say it is easy to just settle back into it.  But that would be a lie.  Conversely it hasn't been the uphill struggle I was expecting, though I have probably been easing myself back in gently.  Need to get my confidence back before I embark on proper painting, so I occupy myself with tinkering away at those more inconsequential tasks.

I have decide to flood the crack in the rock-face with pink neon glow, though at present it just looks like it's been painted over badly with magenta, and I need to wait for that to dry before I embark on the next layer.

There goes my my first bout of proper procrastinating of the year - thank you the internet.  I snapped out of it and made a cup of tea, and trudged back out through the fine, icy rain.  I then sat there listening to the music for probably about 15 minutes in this position:

I'd like to say I was deep in thought, but the truth is I was contemplating nothing more than this:

Time to call it a day, I reckon.